“What a wonderful story of familial love, loss, and the healing power of made-from-scratch food. Susan Gilbert-Collins has written a fantastic debut novel: witty, warm, and redemptive.”

–Susan Rebecca White, author of A Place at the Table

I love this book! The way the different characters deal with the loss of their mother is very well written. I hated for it to end.

Bonnie, Goodreads

…reading this book was like a dining experience in which the chef suggests something off the menu that completely hits the spot.

Janet, Goodreads

Starting from Scratch is the best sort of treat: a novel with nuance and depth that’s palatable too.

Emily Smith, Amazon

I read this while I was on vacation with my family. I found myself intimately connected to the characters… The subtle edge of mystery and personal frustration that runs through the book for most of the characters was believable and enjoyable.

Jenna, Goodreads

As a sometime writer myself, I am blown away by the authors craftsmanship. She consistently follows the maxim to “Show, don’t tell.”

Dr. Cathy Goodwin, Top 100 Amazon Reviewer

Why is someone who just defended her doctoral dissertation still wasting her time at her childhood home, two months after her mother’s funeral, making coq au vin and osso buco?

Olivia Tschetter, the youngest of four high-achieving siblings, is not returning to “normal”–or to graduate school–quickly enough to suit her family. She wants only to bury herself in her mother’s kitchen, finding solace in their shared passion for cooking. Read more

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Susan Gilbert-Collins lives and writes in the Rochester, NY, area but is always a little homesick for her home state of South Dakota. That’s probably why a lot of her fiction is set there, including her first novel, Starting from Scratch.Read more